How many times have your parents told you to "turn that noise down?" How often do you wonder who the heck Wiz Khalifa, Sia, and Mark Ronson are?

It's clear that, as we grow older, our musical tastes change. But how much exactly? That's the question Spotify sought to answer with new research from the company's Taste Profiles (internal tools for personalization) and Echo Nest.

"Personified, 'music was better in my day' is a battle being fought between 35-year-old fathers and teen girlswith single men and moms in their 20s being pulled in both directions," Spotify Taste Profiles owner Ajay Kalia wrote in a blog post.

When plotted onto a circle, mainstream artists fall right in the centerfrom where U.S. teenagers almost exclusively stream very popular music. Each concentric ring represents artists of decreasing popularitythe very path users take as they age out of their teens.

For most music lovers, by the mid-30s, their preferences have matured, "and they know who they're going to be," Kalia said.

That's due in part because they're discovering music genres that weren't playing on the radio as they learned how to drive, the research suggests. Listeners also often return to the music that was popular as they came of age, but has since phased out.

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Though, as Spotify's Eliot Van Buskirk pointed out, around age 42, music taste briefly curves back to the popular charts"a musical midlife crisis and attempt to harken back to our youth, perhaps?"

Or maybe something to drown out the children's tunes playing in a new parent's household. It turns out that having kids in the house exposes people to popular music they would not have otherwise selected.

"So if you're getting older and can't find yourself staying as relevant as you used to, have to fearjust wait for your kids to become teenagers, and you'll get exposed to all the popular music of the day once again," Kalia said.

About the Author

Stephanie joined PCMag in May 2012, moving to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in ... See Full Bio

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